Asigra vs. NetApp SnapMirror

If implemented as a Cloud Service provider (Public Cloud), In House Solution (Private Cloud) or a mixture of both (Hybrid Cloud):

• The Agentless Architecture means there are less support burdens.
• Encryption at Source gives the customer confidence their data is secure.
• WAN Optimisation (Compression & Block Level Incremential Forever and De-deupe of Data), enables a large amount of Data to be protected offsite.
• One step Backup to both Local and Offsite storage enables LAN speed restores with offsite peace of mind.
• Asigra Replication from DS-System to DS-System enables another geographically separate copy of the data.

NetApp SnapMirror is a no-brainer when it comes to retaining an offsite backup for disaster recovery purposes. The backbone of the product is the Snapshot technology built into NetApp technology. In my experience, the Snapshot/SnapMirror software has been flawless and very dependable. The only piece that I can see adding in the future is potentially connecting SnapMirror to the cloud as an additional backup destination.

Incentivized

• Provides capability of local backups while maintaining remote copies on cloud to ensure faster recoveries of recent data and remote protection of all data.
• Helps reduce cost of long term retention by leveraging the BLM functionality.
• It does not need specialized hardware for it to work. Customers and Service Providers can choose their own infrastructure and do not need to rely on any OS or storage based replication even for deploying replication of backups.
• Supports wide range of environments including virtual environments with remarkable features like remote VDR with incremental restores.

• Seeding is only required initially
• Replication updates are very swift
• Traffic can be reduced with network compression
• It is well integrated with NetApp's SnapCenter backup tool

Incentivized

• We would like to see Asigra come out with a Replication Model for quick Recovery of systems upon Disaster. We can have quicker recovery, DR, with Virtual Machines but we would like to have Physical Machine recovery in less than 2 hours. Replication can accomplish this...
• We would like to see Geolocation and remote wipe for endpoint devices
• We would like to see the solution provide easy "roll back" after a disaster.

• Pro: Stability in storage we have had these in place for 3 years and besides a failed disk, there have been no issues.
• Pro: Replication options are pretty good
• Pro: Storage Provisioning as well as a wealth of features that are an additional add-on for competitors
• Cons: Support is lacking in customer service and being proactive of system alerts and errors
• Cons: the Learning curve. Easy to make mistakes using the user interface as it does lack functionality.

Incentivized

• Asigra is a great entry way into the cloud.

• Compliance is a tricky thing. Jumping backup software means having to deal with previous copies somehow. Asigra is built for the long haul.
• Asigra is continuing to increase their feature stack. They have made huge steps in the VM backup in the last 3 years and continue to implement features there.
• As far as cloud backup software goes, there are many that can do it, but none that do it as well as Asigra.

Incentivized

Very well versed and a good product to deal with downtime to recover from the failure is pretty good. Also, NetApp's engagement on Incident calls is very professional and humble. I would give a 100% rating to this product as I have been working on this for the past 5 years. It is stable, fast and highly reliable

Incentivized

It is a bit rough around the edges and the GUI feels like a wrap around of a CLI but it is simple to use. The problem comes in when there is an error code you are usually chasing down the error code in the specific vendor's forums rather than Asigra's

Incentivized

It just works 99% of the time. Even if there's a network outage, jobs just pick up after the outage is over. The only reason it's not a 10 is the weakness of the GUI interface for configuration. For me, all configuration has to be done at the command line.

Incentivized

Over 6 consecutive years our Asigra Backend had 99.99% uptime and provided 7x24 data restore availability.
Software is robust in operations, provides N+1 node architecture to protect against failure of half of the nodes (majority of the nodes still up) and software based replication to protect against data loss across two geographically independent datacenter locations. Why not 10 points? Some major upgrades still require short downtime within a planned maintenance windows.

They respond quickly on your request. They ask for details at the time of logging the support request itself ensuring the first response is not for collecting the basic details only. They refund you the support request if they find it as a functionality issue. They follow up on you to ensure you are satisfied and happy with the response and resolution that they have provided.

NetApp support has always been great. With the NetApp Auto-support system/web portal, the visibility into your NetApp storage is incredible. There have been times when I've been contacted by them for an issue that I haven't even discovered yet. For example, I received a call 20 minutes after a drive failed in our filer. I hadn't checked my email at that time and therefore didn't see the alert.

Incentivized

Anything training past level 1 and level 2 is a waste of time. They do not offer training, just an exam and require you to read 2500 pages of their documentation as their training. They are selling you something which you already have. Training exams are far fetched and cover topics hidden within the documentation. A lot of their documentation does not match across itself. They don't even follow the standard versions Major.Minor.ServicePack.Hotfix. They use the MAJOR.MAJOR.MAJOR.Hotfix method, which doesn't match their documentation. They require you to take training in order to keep your engaged hybrid partnership. If you ask me personally, their training is a scam to make more money.

Quick to install, easy to create jobs, schedules and retention policies. No large cycles of setting up backup volumes or trash volumes. Retention job itself configures the BLM functionality so you don't need an expertise to handle the BLM module separately.

I would say that it has the same functionality as the three mentioned above in their respective fields (might have a bit less than some of them) but Asigra offers all of this and more so if you are looking for a single backup solution across the entire firm then Asigra is the much better choice

Incentivized

We chose NetApp's SnapMirror solution primarily because it was already integrated and licensed on our storage platforms. This allowed us to have a very fast implementation time and really allowed us to quickly close the learning gap of our administrators. Not only is NetApp SnapMirror easy to use, but it is also really easy to set up. IBM's product seemed quite difficult to set up and it would have taken our team much more time (which we don't have) to learn that product than NetApp's SnapMirror.

Incentivized

• Our entire Asigra environment can be easily monitored through one plane of glass thanks to their DS-Operator and Asigra Management Console.
• It's quite simple to use and navigate.
• Never has restoration fallen short.
• Data from several generations can be saved and retrieved.
• After a hardware failure, an edge server can be easily and quickly rebuilt.

Incentivized

• NetApp SnapMirror has allowed us to recover critical data in a timely manner on multiple occasions.
• We have been able to decrease our RPO objectives.
• We have been able to decrease our DR costs as well.

Incentivized